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Bitcoin is a new "currency" created in 2009 by an unknown person using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Transactions are made with no middle men – meaning, no banks! There are no transaction fees and no need to give your real name. 
Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. Bitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent "triple entry bookkeeping" system in existence.
Triple entry is a simple idea, albeit revolutionary to accounting. A triple entry transaction is a 3 party one, in which Mary pays Tom and Ivan intermediates. Each holds the transaction, making for triple copies. To make a transaction, Mary signs over a payment instruction to Tom with her public-key-based signature. Ivan the issuer then packages the payment request into a receipt, and that receipt becomes the transaction.
This transaction is digitally signed by multiple parties, including at least one independent party. It then becomes a powerful and tangible evidence of the transaction. The final receipt *is the entry*. Then, the *collection of signed receipts* becomes the accounts, in accounting terms. This collection replaces the double entry bookkeeping system, because the single digitally signed receipt is a better evidence than the two entries that make up the transaction, and the collection of signed receipts is a better record than the entire chart of accounts.
How does one acquire bitcoins?
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